Workers' Liberty

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union conference in San Francisco has passed a motion “calling on unions and working people in the US and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” on May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East”.

Following the massive strike movement of last Autumn which ended in stalemate, French rail workers are preparing for the next round.

At the start of December, the Iranian government arrested over 40 left-wing Iranian student activists. Some have been released but many are still in prison. (A full update will appear in the next issue of Solidarity.) Meanwhile, there have been a number of protests held in London, and British students and education workers have launched this statement of solidarity.

Shop workers are on strike in Berlin (and other parts of Germany) at the moment (11 December 2007) - a number of supermarket chains, department stores, the biggest bookshop chain, and also H&M.

The railworkers' strike action in France seems to be ending for the time being, apparently with some concessions, but student mobilisations continue, and may even be growing among high-school students. The militant student union SUD-Etudiant reports: "Thousands of university and high school students marched on Thursday 22 November, in many cities across France, to protest against the university autonomy law" [a first step to privatisation].

First posted 20 November. Six days into their strike, French transport workers are refusing to back down. In spite of constant attacks in the press, and union leaders trying to weasel their way out of a fight, rail workers are keeping up the pressure and the leading the public sector fightback against Sarkozy's reforms.

On Monday November 5, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in nearly twenty years. Last minute negotiations with the employers’ organisation, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach a deal. The WGA (which for perverse historical reasons is actually two unions, the WGA west and the WGA east) ‘downed pencils’. This followed, for example, a mass meeting of the WGA west in which 3,000 writers voted 90% in favour of strike action.

Yayha al Faifi fled Saudi Arabia in 2002 after he was sacked from his job with British Aerospace for trying to organise a workers' meeting to discuss new contracts. He has continued the struggle for workers' rights in Saudi Arabia ever since.

Two leaders of the Iranian bus workers’ union have been given long prison sentences for “acting against national security”, according to reports from Iran.

Israeli Defence Minister and ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak has announced that
Israel is getting closer to a large-scale incursion into Gaza with “every passing day”.

Mansour Osanloo, the Iranian bus workers’ leader, has lost the sight in one eye after being denied the urgent medical treatment he needed in prison. Apparently he has now received medical treatment... too late to save his sight.

Mansour Osanloo, the jailed leader of the bus workers' union in Tehran, faces the possible loss of his eyesight unless he receives urgent medical attention -- which the Iranian authorities are denying him.

Last month, for the first time in 37 years the US United Auto Workers (UAW) union launched a two-day nationwide strike against General Motors. The strike involved 73,000 production workers.

I HAVE been on many picket lines in my time, but until recently they have all taken place in the real world. 27 September saw the first ever strike and picket to take place in virtual reality.

See reports here:
One Sided Class War: The UAW-GM 2007 Negotiations, by Sam Gindin
National Auto Strike Leaves Lingering Questions, from Labor Notes
Auto Armageddon? from Against the Current

By Martin Thomas

Two of Iraq’s major union federations have formed a united front to fight against oil privatisation and the government’s attempt to outlaw the oil unions.

AWL members on the 9 August demonstration outside the Iranian embassy to free Tehran busworkers' leader Mansour Ossanlou, Saqaz bakers' leader Mahmoud Salehi, and all class-war prisoners in Iran.

Mansour Ossanloo, the president of the Iranian independent bus workers’ union was kidnapped by plain clothes police on Tuesday 10 July and taken to the notorious Evin prison.

Ossanloo was stopped while he was returning home by a public transit bus in Tehran. According to Iranian workers’ sources, a Peugeot car stopped the bus and unidentified plain clothes agents attacked him - beating him severely while telling people that he was a thief! Ossanloo tried to identify himself as the president of the union for the witnesses in order to get help but the agents stopped him.

Agence Haitïenne de Presse

At least 500 Téléco workers received termination letters Friday as part of the government's announced plan to privatize the company. Another thousand are expected to be fired on Monday.

BY Mike Rowley

On 1 June, public sector unions in South Africa called a general strike of over a million public sector workers in response to a derisory pay offer from the government (originally 5.3%, creeping up to 6%, then 6.5%) that would be completely cancelled out by inflation. Public sector workers in South Africa are very poorly paid and have not had a pay rise in real terms for ten years.

BY Mike Rowley

Pakistan is going through a period of heightened struggle against the military-based government of Pervez Musharraf. The current struggles began in earnest on 14 May when a general strike shut down Pakistan’s major cities, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Quetta.

By Amina Saddiq

Two days before Solidarity went to press, on 6 June, police in the South African city of Durban attacked nurses picketing their hospital as part of a national public sector strike over pay with plastic bullets and stun grenades. Several strikers were injured and twenty arrested.

Paul Hampton reviews Live working or die fighting: How the working class went global, by Paul Mason, (Harvill Secker £12.99)

“The attacks are strengthening my determination to defend workers”

Being a trade unionist is a very dangerous business in Palestine. Rasem Al Bayari, Deputy General Secretary of the PGFTU (Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions) knows that well: following the destruction of a PGFTU building in October 2006 and the firing of two rockets at his home in January, on 6 April Rasem Al Bayari was injured by masked men who attacked him while he was in a car with his family. He describes these events and the enormous problems faced by workers in Palestine.

Mansour Ossanlou is a leader of the Syndicate [Union] of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkate Vahed). He was arrested and imprisoned in December 2005. Following huge national and international pressure Ossanlou was released in August 2006, but rearrested in November. He has since been released on bail and is awaiting trial on the charge of “propaganda against the state” and “engaging in activities contrary to national security”.

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party of Pakistan, a significant revolutionary left group which opposes Pakistan’s military regime, its US backers and political Islam, was arrested for four days earlier this month.

BY Sacha Ismail

Across Iran, workers seeking to celebrate May Day faced harassment and violence from the Islamic Republic’s security forces.

On 27 April a wildcat strike broke out in Musgrave warehouses in Dublin. The whole crew, around 80 people, both immigrant and natives, stopped their work after successive acts of discrimination by the management.

Oaxaca

As we went to press, teachers in Oaxaca city were planning to take strike action in a further sign of the revival of the movement which rose to prominence last year.